baking monday

My family was not in need of more sugar on November 1st. But I simply cannot resist when Gabriel looks up at me, his big eyes happy with anticipation, and says: let's bake, Mama!

Before I've assented or thought of what we might try this time, he is urgently dragging a heavy dining room chair across the kitchen floor in order to assume his post at the counter. My able toddler crows out helpful suggestions (We need butter! Get me a spoon! I want to dump the flour!) while I search for a recipe. I have had a hankering for gingerbread lately, so we tried this and it was fantastic. (I am assuming you might also find it in the King Arthur whole grain baking cookbook, one that I have borrowed from both friends and the public library many times.)

We had already punched down the bread dough for its second rise when we started on the gingerbread. Even though they always feels irresistibly spontaneous, Gabriel's baking inspirations hit pretty regularly on Mondays. We have bid adieu to the weekend with all its socializing and freedom from routine. We are ready to settle down in Gabriel-and-Mama Land, a place whose spiritual center is the big yellow mixing bowl. We feel such pleasure and mutual affection standing before it. And it just seems right to begin the week by creating something sweet to proudly present after dinner.

Today, I put Gabriel down for his nap while the spicy gingerbread baked. I came back downstairs and shaped the bread dough into two loaves, then covered them with dish towels for their final rise. Finally I sat down to do a bit of work at the computer.

On Friday I had written something for work that I felt confident and happy submitting. I thought I had finally "gotten it" and hit the right tone. Suffice it to say, in reading my email I discovered that I had not, in fact, gotten much of anything. I felt so discouraged. Then dark clouds began to gather over my head, then I felt that awful fear that I would never figure out what to do with myself professionally, and then it began to pour.

Despite the distracting thunderstorm of emotion, I eventually made myself settle in and address the revisions to my writing, which helped put things in perspective. But I couldn't shake the more general disorientation. Every part my life outside the home seems precarious, uncertain. None of them (ie school, church, work, neighborhood, friends) are integrated with each other. So what am I doing here anyway? When will I figure out how to become a part of this place? How can I find a way to better live out my vocation - something that remains inchoate but certainly has to do with finding points of connection and support in struggling communities - when I seem incapable of finding points of connection and support myself? 

How will I find a way to integrate the parts of my life such that I am rooting into something real and true? I don't see the way forward, yet I know I must find one eventually if this is to be our home.

And in this mood, I ran out to the mailbox to see what Frances had left in it for Miss Bernadette, our mail carrier, before it was time to pick her up from school. This is what I found:

Frances has a Hello Kitty calendar hanging in her room. In the November 1st box, a line in small text announces that today is Hello Kitty's birthday. So Frances addressed a birthday card and put it in the mailbox this morning! I wanted to laugh and cry. I know a tiny part of Frances understands that you can't send letters to Hello Kitty in Magic Land via the US Postal Service, but most of her believes that you absolutely can. Just make up a zip code.

I opened the front door with her letter in my hand and the house smelled heavenly. Like a home. The bread was now baking and the gingerbread was cooling next to an enormous bag of apples picked over the weekend. What a distance I had traveled in a few moments, between the angst over my languishing public self and the peaceful sense of domestic satisfaction I felt upon entering our house!

The daily work of creating our home and caring for my family surely brings me joy. (And frustration, yes, but what job doesn't?) There are moments when I feel downright flush with the happiness that comes from doing a good job (like yesterday, watching the kids chat with neighbors and celebrate candy in their fabulous homemade costumes). I wish I could recalibrate my insides somehow, so that those moments would be enough. So I could shake this restlessness.

But it follows me around. Thank goodness for Baking Monday, for imaginative children and a kindly mail carrier, for a husband who works very hard and supports me in both my domestic endeavors and my dreams for someday creating something out in the wide world. These gifts do not go unnoticed; they help me regain my balance when the world seems strange and daunting. Despite that voice that speaks when I am feeling small and lost, I do have a community. My family, my friends, all of you. We may be small in number, but in our own ways, we are vast with ambition and love.